The Cabinet-Makers Apprentice, or, Mickey makes a mess…

I don’t have a thousand tiny brooms carrying water, but I do have a bunch of little scraps of wood which I’m now sorting thru to find pieces big enough to use! Actually, I got quite a bit done today, when I stop and think about it, but it certainly doesn’t look like much progress.

I figured out to make a cabinet to put the A/C unit in, and while I don’t have the unit here yet, I do have the rough dimensions. Feeling confident of my ability to read a tape measure, I jumped in a built a cabinet. While figuring out how to make that, I decided the stove-tops new location, while convenient in the galley layout, is not quite so handy in the bedroom. Frying bacon over the bed might become problematic, so I made a back-splash behind the stove, which also doubles as support for the A/C cabinet. Worked well, and I think it looks good.

Kim wanted a shelf over the end of the bed, and this also was easy to work into the A/C cabinet. I simply left the aft end open, and viola, a shelf for alarm clock, coffee cup, cocktail, knickknacks, whatever. The back of the cabinet will be cut out for the A/C exhaust, and the ceiling will have a vent opening for intake air. When I get the A/C, I’ll make a face-plate to fit the front and close in the front of the cabinet. It’ll work well. You can see the wiring for the A/C plug-in the back of the shelf, there’ll be a small wooden box built to hold the receptical. The bed platform sets on the wheel-house cover, seen here directly under the stove-top. Hence the need to keep bacon grease splatters from finding their way onto the quilt…

Looking forward, you can see the fridge, on which I mounted the trailers original “Marvel” fridge handle. Instant vintage refrigerator!

The upper cabinets turned out to be more difficult to actually build than I’d thought when making the mock-up. Getting the base level, with the floor, and from the front of the base to the wall was difficult, mainly because I didn’t have a helper, but I finally got it. Then, I had to figure out to make it look like a face-frame cabinet, and hide the pie-cut stringer on the ceiling, while not cutting up a 1×12 to get the arch. It’s sort of cheating, but it worked.

Tomorrow I hope to get the bulkhead cabinet doors cut out and finished, and make the shelf that’ll go over the front window over the booth. I’ve figured out how to mount it, there isn’t much framing over the window to support a shelf, but by using the bulkhead on the left side, and the wall on the right, I can make it strong enough to be useful and not fall off going down the road.

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter in the “Tini-Home” saga!

I had 1/3 sheet of Birch ply left over from the Spartan, and was able to use it to make the stove back-splash, some of the rest of the A/C cabinet, and now have plenty of stock to make the upper cabinet doors from.